In 1968, as Today, Filling a Senate Seat Was a Complex Chore

The replacement senator should be “an alert, modern, creative intellectual leader — a rare commodity in this party of ours” — whose appointment would “help you with the national party” and “validate your own regularity and discrimination where it would count most — and at the same time do no violence to your philosophy.” It also wouldn’t hurt to hail from upstate, be loyal and share the departing senator’s positions.

That was the recommendation of George L. Hinman, the chief political adviser to Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, in 1968 after the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

That was the last time a New York governor had to appoint a United States senator — until now.

Unlike Mr. Paterson, Mr. Rockefeller wasn’t concerned about whether to name a woman or a Hispanic New Yorker to the Senate. But his decision 40 years ago was complicated enough: by personalities, by Mr. Rockefeller’s own presidential ambitions and by local politics — beginning with the fact that the governor was a Republican and Senator Kennedy was a Democrat.

On June 19, 1968, two weeks after the assassination, Mr. Hinman recommended a candidate who met his qualifications: Representative Charles E. Goodell of Jamestown, upstate in Chautauqua County.

Mr. Rockefeller appointed Mr. Goodell, but not until nearly three months later.

His first choice turned him down: John W. Gardner, a liberal Republican who had just quit as Lyndon B. Johnson’s health, education and welfare secretary — in part because he considered the cabinet too preoccupied with Vietnam to fulfill the Great Society domestic agenda.

Mr. Gardner decided to remain as chairman of the Urban Coalition, a private campaign to transform America’s cities.

Next on the list was Mayor John V. Lindsay, a fellow Republican, although his appointment to the Senate would return City Hall to Democratic control. The job was widely believed to be his for the asking. But Mr. Lindsay was too stubborn — and committed to his own urban agenda — to ask, especially without a firm commitment from Mr. Rockefeller. The governor never directly made the offer.

Mr. Rockefeller even considered his nephew Jay — a transplant to West Virginia (where he was later elected to the Senate) and a Democrat no less (which, his biographer, Richard Norton Smith, explained, “just goes to show how much Rocky was out of touch with the national G.O.P. by then”).

Five other names were on a list forwarded by Robert R. Douglass, counsel to the governor: Joseph C. Wilson, the chief executive of Xerox; Jackie Robinson, who was also being promoted by Mr. Rockefeller’s pollster; former Senator Kenneth B. Keating, whom Mr. Kennedy had defeated; and two congressmen, Ogden Reid of Westchester and Mr. Goodell.

Mr. Hinman, who was a member of the Republican National Committee from New York, wrote in a memo to Mr. Rockefeller that appointing Mr. Goodell “would do as much as anything could to help you with the national party.”

The memo continued, “It would validate your own regularity and discrimination where it would count most — and at the same time do no violence to your philosophy.”

Mr. Goodell also earned praise from the governor’s banker brother, David, for his support of foreign aid programs.

Mr. Hinman revealed why he was felt so comfortable that Mr. Goodell would follow the Kennedy tradition. Before the assassination, he wrote, House Republicans were preparing an exposé that “leaves little doubt that Kennedy was deliberately watching Charlie and appropriating his positions.”

“Kennedy’s death aborted this,” Mr. Hinman wrote, “but Charlie thought you would be interested in it from the standpoint of the senatorial appointment.”

That summer, between the assassination and the Republican National Convention, Mr. Rockefeller veered left in an effort to appropriate Mr. Kennedy’s promise of new leadership and capture his constituency. That strategy failed and the party chose Richard M. Nixon as its nominee. Mr. Rockefeller returned home to focus on the Senate vacancy.

In the 1970 election, Mr. Rockefeller publicly supported Mr. Goodell for a full term. But he was not willing to jeopardize his own re-election among Republicans who were alienated by Mr. Goodell’s liberal shift in the Senate and were defecting in droves to the Conservative Party candidate, James L. Buckley.

That fall, the state was mysteriously flooded with two sets of campaign buttons. One proclaimed “Rockefeller-Goodell.” The other, “Rockefeller-Buckley.”

Mr. Rockefeller — and Mr. Buckley — won.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A41 of the New York edition with the headline: In 1968, as Today, Filling a Senate Seat Was a Complex Chore. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe